1. Field of the Invention
THIS INVENTION relates to an egg harvester.
2. Prior Art
The egg harvester, by the present applicants, disclosed in International Publication WO 92/20222 (=AU-B-17690/92/(659642)/=EP 0591468 B1/=U.S. Pat. No. 5,562,067) was a major advance on existing commercial egg harvesters available at the beginning of the 1990's.
There were three important concepts relevant to the design of the egg harvester of WO 92/20222. These were as follows:
a) the hens were to be disturbed as little as possible, while on their nests, as the eggs are harvested;
b) the hens were to be provided with individual nesting boxes for privacy while they were laying; and
c) the nesting boxes were to be provided with litter flooring.
While the egg harvester of WO 92/20222 was a considerable advance over the existing commercial egg harvesters, as stated above, the design criteria resulted in two practical limitations.
Firstly, to minimise disturbance to the hens as the eggs were collected, the intermediate floor section, mounted on the shuttle or carriage which moved along the harvester, was arranged substantially co-planar with the adjacent ramp sections of the belt forming the floor of the nesting boxes, so that the slots through which the eggs fell were substantially vertical, ie., as the slots were advanced along the floor of the nesting boxes, the eggs (72) and litter (73) fell through the slots (70) and the eggs were separated from the litter by an egg separator (74), in which a plurality of radial fingers (75) were provided on a shaft (76) journalled transversely to the shaft frame. Fixed fingers (77) provided between every second pair of radial fingers (75) guided the eggs (72) onto an inclined tray (78), which transferred the eggs to a shuttle egg conveyor (79). In practice, it was found that the eggs were liable to be damaged when two eggs fell together onto the egg separator (74).
Secondly, the provision of individual nesting boxes for each hen proved inefficient use of the floor space occupied by the egg harvester. Furthermore, the inventor has observed that the hens are happier when they are allowed to lay their eggs in small groups, eg., of 6–12 hens.